Unit III

Vivian Ortega
ENG 131.02
Dr. Lucas
06 May 2014
Raw foods
Ingesting nutrients and proper physical activity are necessary for everyday human life. Every little thing that we consume can dramatically help or hinder our body’s ability to maintain homeostasis. From the beginning of human civilization, man has hunted for food while migrating. With time, we have gravitated toward an agricultural society of stability that is greatly influenced by medical advancement. This gravitation was thought to be beneficial, but has confused our perception of progression and instead has led us to regress nutritionally. Ultimately, food and water are the number one survival necessity for mankind, so what we don’t know won’t hurt us, right? Well in reality, what we know will benefit us, and knowing the capacity of what our bodies can endure physically and nutritionally will result in a pure and lucid life. Maintaining an over-all raw food diet will help get rid of all the toxins and help every cycle in our bodies work effectively; which will be more beneficial to us in the long run and will set our nutrition clock to a more accurate time.
What we consume in modern times is traveling between 1,500 to 2,000 miles before we get it and is at least a week old by the time it hits the market (Brighthope, Zeines and Blewitt). According to Dr. Victor Zeines from the documentary Food Matters, “the nutritional value of food that is at least five days old, is questionable”. How much nutritional value is actually available through the product of cheap labor and genetic modification? Dr. Zeines strongly affirms that on a very lucky day, “the percentage of nutrients available are 40. Professor Ian Brighthope, a nutritional and environmental medicine expert, maintains that “nearly every food that you will find in the shops in a big city have been processed, and they have been delayed to the shops. Quite often the nutrients have deteriorated or disappeared from the food by the time they get onto the plate. The world authority on raw foods and super foods’ expert David Wolfe, is concerned on the amount of pesticides that are being used to handle every threat to every crop. “We, for whatever reason, decided we’re going to spray everything with every kind of pesticide, herbicide, larvicide, and fungicide. We decided we’re going to genetically modify things we don’t know anything about” (Brighthope, Zeines and Blewitt). The major fertilizer used is made up of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, which wouldn’t be so bad if the soil didn’t require as much minerals as it does, says Dr. Charlotte Gerson; which is an approximation of 52. When the soils are deficient, the plants are also deficient and weakened, and they lose their defenses. This process causes our bodies, because of our dependency on food, to imitate the symptoms and leads to the preciseness of the aphorism: You are what you eat.
We as the consumers have no other choice but to be what we eat, and that is in many cases deficient and toxic. Most of the food eaten by the majority of Americans, is very high in calories and cholesterol; even the vegetables, because they have been processed and cooked and have lost their enzymes; which help with our body’s digestion (Cobb). Consuming raw grown crops from a healthy soil will have a tremendous effect on the body. The human body will react to food that is incompatible, as an invasion of a foreign organism; which forces the body to go through digestive leukocytosis, where the body begins generating white cell activity against the cooked food that was eaten (Ward). This may lead to malnutrition in future generations and is seen in many cases today.
Chronic malnutrition is the persistent lack of access to necessary vitamins and minerals in early childhood, leading to health problems late in life, even if the patient later receives adequate nutrition. This causes in the later ages symptoms of fatigue and weakness in the immune system (Global Health Observatory). The nutrition that has become so common for us now is weakening us and is decreasing our energy, but has allowed for experts to distinguish the great benefits of certain foods like the spirulina algae and cacao. These certain foods, which are raw, are extraordinary because of their amounts of vitamins and minerals and the effect on the body. The significance of these nutrients will be imperative for the survival of human kind; and may have a correlation with life expectancy (Ehrlich).
Japan has one of the highest life expectancies in the world. Compared to the United States’ of 78.64, Japan’s life expectancy is 82.59. Japan has one of the lowest adult obesity percentages in the in the industrialized world, which is only 3%. Their diet consists of mainly raw vegetables, rice and noodles and lots of physical activity. This type of lifestyle is believed to be the reason why they are on the top ten list for having the longest life expectancy (The Editors of Publications International). In order to further explore the effect of raw foods on our bodies, the Evolution Diet experiment was carried out and documented for analyzing (The Editors of Publications International).
The Evolution Diet study was conducted to test the effect of certain food in our bodies for which top scientists from around the world were commissioned. Nine volunteers were required and split up. They were weighed and their cholesterol levels were recorded; which revealed that the levels were alarmingly high. The first portion of the participants was asked to maintain a raw food diet for twelve days, while living outdoors on a camp. The second experiment was performed on two male truck drivers who suffered from on-going constipation. Driver number one had a transit time of 22 hours and 35 minutes, while driver number two had a transit time of 40 hours and 30 minutes. They were instructed to eat only raw foods and lots of fibers for the ten days of their experiment and on the final day say that their effort paid off.
The first group of volunteers decreased by 17%, 19% and 23% in cholesterol levels and the drivers decreased by forty hours all together. Driver number one’s time decreased by ten hours and driver number two’s decreased by thirty. Every individual that assisted with the study was pleased to see the product, and how such a small change could such a large impact on their lives, in such a short period (What are we really eating).
Hippocrates believed that the human body had a self-healing capacity and all it took was becoming aware of the care that must be given to the body; “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be by food”. Proper nutrition is what it takes to boost all of those systems in our bodies, so that they are able to work properly.
William J. McCormick and Fredrick Robert Klenner left behind documentation of curing viral diseases using high doses of vitamin C (Ward). When the human body is nourished by vitamins, minerals, and nutrients, it allows for the body to compensate this nourishment by acting to repair the damage that has been caused by poor nutrition. The bonds react to our intake by completing what is remaining for the reaction’s proper performance. Once the body has reached proper nourishment, it will be able to enjoy the benefits of our investment. The consumption of raw foods are man’s natural form, and it will provide the nutrition needed for our digestive system to properly complete our natural cycle; and the adequate factors to help our bodies heal and work against illness.

Bibliography
Cobb, Brenda. What are we really eating? 01 January 2014. 20 April 2014 <.>.

Ehrlich, Steven. Spirulina, University of Maryland Medical Center. 11 June 2011. 19 April 2014 <.>.

Food Matters. Dir. James Colquhoun. Perf. Ian Brighthope, et al. 2008.

Global Health Observatory. 2014. 19 April 2014 <.>.

Micozzi, Marc and Gary Breecher. “Cartenoir Analysis of Selected Raw and cooked foods Associated with a Lower Risk of Cancer.” JNCI (1989).

Morse, Joseph. “A Mixed Bag.” Morse, Joseph. The Evolution Diet. San Diego: Amelior Publishing Company, 2008. 233.

Null, Gary, et al. “Death by Medicine.” (2014).

The Editors of Publications International, Ltd. “How Stuff Works.” Top 10 Countries with the Highest Life Expectancy 19 September 2007: 10.

Ward, Ashley. Digestive Leukocytosis. 2009. 19 April 2014 <.>.

“What are we really eating?” 1 January 2002. Capital Health. 27 April 2014 <.>.